Fire up your browsing experience with Firefox for Windows 8

We haven’t been following the Mozilla Foundation’s progress too much on a Windows 8 browser—we just know that they were working on one.

So either we missed it or this is hot off the presses but they have released a “nightly build” of their Windows 8 App (Modern Style) Firefox browser for x86 devices. That means you Surface RT (ARM CPU) folk will have to wait a bit, but if you’re on full-fledged Windows 8, you may want to take a look.

Heading over to their site (http://nightly.mozilla.org/) you can download the “Standard” version to install on your PC or laptop. It will then walk you through the normal install.

Now, like Chrome there are two versions of the browser: one for desktop and one for RT/Start. To make it RT-styled, open as a Start app, make it the default browser by choosing ‘Nightly’ from the popup menu.

Reader of the site Rockartisten also tips us how to get those tabs to always show:

Indeed the browser ain’t half bad and it’s always great to see alternatives using the new RT style come to the platform. Now if only alternative browsers for the Surface RT and associated hardware could happen…

Give this man some kind of internet trophy for the decade. Chrome is spyware disguised as a browser nothing more nothing less. All of the urls you enter are subject to being sent back to google for their proper harvesting of your data. Why would you do that to yourself?

I Don't know, why do everybody use a big spyware called Facebook? Who knows?
EDIT: lol I knew it would end showing up all my comments that weren't being showed at first xD
Buggy comment section is buggy.....

I agree. Opera was the one browser (full of faults but still cool) that was always different from others. Guess I jumped ship to IE in time to avoid this change. It will be just like all other browsers now.

While I have recently switched to Chrome after 7 or 8 years of using Opera (Opera does not have a metro UI for my Acer Iconia W510) I am willing to switch back to Opera as soon as they make their browser metro and the UI is as adaptable as it is now (custom browser buttons ftw!). I do not mind them switching to webkit (after all, webkit is a good rendering engine) but it is sad to see another one go. Now we are left with three rendering engines: trident, gecko and webkit.

Can you please explain what you mean by this? I still use opera as my main browser because I really like the way it does certain things, but the bugs are increasingly frustrating so im slowly transitioning to ie 10. I like that you can save browsing sessions and you can continue where you left off (I know ie 10 resumes now). I also like to keep 10+ tabs open at any given time and don't want to lose them (I wish they could sync between devices). I'm really starting to like ie 10 (I think my features are getting there), but what's wrong with webkit?

Thing is, even if you call it Modern app, how does that alleviate the confusion that it doesn't run on ARM processors? Because there are Modern Apps for ARM and Modern Apps for x86, neither description excactly rolls off the tongue...

Okay so where did Microsoft ever call them RT-style apps then? Why use that term? If Mozilla are a bunch of failures and call it that we dont need to perpetuate their idiocy here. That's like continuing to call Windows Phone - Windows Mobile 7 or Windows 8 Mobile or Windows 8 Phone, theres no reason to copy someone doing something the wrong way.

"Windows Store apps" can only be downloaded and installed on the Windows Store (big surprise!). Desktop apps are .EXE files. So this is a desktop app.

Exe-Files can only run on Windows 8 (x86) but Windows Store apps created with the WinRT framework can be compiled for either x86 or ARM. Not every Windows Store app does work on Windows RT.

The confusion is about the wording of WinRT (the framework) and Windows RT (the ARM version of Windows 8). And additionally Microsoft had to let desktop browsers run exclusively in the modern UI becaue there is no thrid-party browser engine created with WinRT framework.

@MediaCastleX
How about we expect people writing articles to get the information correct the first time? It takes all of a few minutes to proof an article (using the term article loosely) that takes up less than a page. If people spent more time actually checking facts, grammar, usage, etc., the internet would be a better source of factual (and useful) information....

The (formerly known as Metro) view still uses the WinRT framework even if you don't install it from the Store.

There's a single exception for the fact that all WinRT-based apps have to be installed from the Store, and that is for browsers. And that's the reason that only your default browser can be in the Metro view (just easier to call it that)... Microsoft doesn't want every single app declaring that it's a browser and being able to be sideloaded.

Why bother? Mozilla, until recently, was colluding with Google to force the inferior and infringing WebM format on HTML 5. Now that that has failed, they have begun colluding with Google to force Web-RTC into some sort of bastardized spd "standard" instead of adopting and using the superior CU-RTC protocol.

Google and Mozilla working together to hold the web back and let Google control it. Never thought I would see the day.

Too bad for Mozilla but Google is going to eat their lunch. They tried to steal IP from apple and steve jobs showed them the door. Now they are doing it with Mozilla. Once Chrome decimates Firefox to low digit marketshare they intend to stop funding Mozilla and have no reason to pay for google search being the default in Firefox, at that point Mozilla will have no funding to continue operations. WIthin 5 years Mozilla + Firefox will be dead.

It is a matter of control. Google is currently pushing Web-RTC in part because it is not compatible with Skype, Tango, or Facetime and allows Google to collect even more data. A side effect of what Google is doing also keeps Web-RTC from working with legacy telephony systems. CU-RTC is a competing protocol that will allow all the features of Web-RTC to exist as well as include interoperability with other telephony and legacy systems.

But Google doesn't control CU-RTC, so they don't like it and work against it. Sadly they got Mozilla on their side (again).

And when someone says app, people start asking for what UI. There needs to be a clear differentiation so that every article in the future doesn't say "metro RT app for x86, you know the modern UI, but not for RT devices, only RT environment, but not Windows RT".

Inside Windows it is just "apps" and "desktop apps". Outside of it Microsoft now officially calling them "Windows Store apps". They had to change the term from previous "Metro styled apps". It may be confucing but not everything is Microsoft's fault.

Windows Store apps is bad. What should we call them when we sideload? It needs to be international, logical, short and simple. We have two environments, desktop and start, with different types of apps. Why not desktop apps and Start apps?

While I do like IE10, the one thing keeping me from getting a Surface RT is the fact that both my daughter's grammar school and my college have websites that are not compatible with IE10. I have to use Firefox on my Windows 8 PC to access blackboard and anything for my daughter's school. So yeah, an alternative browser is needed for the Surface RT.

Yes, even in compatibility mode. The message I get from my daughters school tells me that my browser needs to be updated. On the college site, the drop downs won't display the selected items and both blackboard and SAM don't function properly.

Aw, no...you didn't know about the plugin compatibility on the desktop IE. Yes, those sites, as others won't run in the main app, but sometimes they run on the desktop version...well, some sites are STILL behind. Best of luck to you and yours anyway! ;)

I don't know what blackboard is, but when a website is not compatible with neither IE10 standards nor ie10 compatibility mode you can hit F12 to open the developer toolbar and change the browsing mode to IE9. And if that works, you should complain to the website owner to fix his site for IE10 (which is coming soon to Windows 7) instead of returning your Surface.

So either we missed it or this is hot off the presses but they have released a “nightly build” of their Windows 8 App (Modern Style) Firefox browser for x86 devices. That means you Surface RT (ARM CPU) folk will have to wait a bit, but if you’re on full-fledged Windows 8, you may want to take a look.

The Nightly modern UI version came our around the Windows 8 launch. So yea, I would say you missed it. I literally thought I accidentally went to some archived article page and had to double check the dates on the comments...

I am still using Mozilla desktop because of multitasking. I can switch faster between the 20 open tabs that are simultaneously open and I also have a better overview of my bookmarks. Plus, I have some addons which I just need to use, like Zotero, Adblock and Lastpass. While I like the clean and fluid work of IE10 metro, I still find it difficult to work on it (although I assume it is much better on touch devices). So I just started to test Mozilla metro, and I think it brings some new aspects that I like from the beginning, like the fact that it shows my bookmarks right from the start. However, addons are still missing which will not allow me to switch over to any metro style app :(

YES, I definitely agree with you that there are some compelling reasons to use FF Mozilla... It is very functional with the great addons, mouse gestures, the addon bar, multiple functional toolbars, multiple tabs, groups, etc. I use both IE10 desktop and RT on my Tab but while so much better than previous versions it still cannot give me what FF does. Also, jsyk IE10 and IE9 will not work with several of the collaboration programs that my family uses for school and yes I tried to make them work but it was just easier to install FF on their computers.

This feature has been around since the late October nightlys, but it was only in a recent patch release that it actually started performing well. It'd fail to load pages or take a long time to load. Of course that's why its not yet in the full release, it still feels like a feature in beta.

Just tried it out. It looks amazing and has lots of neat features. Needs much more work to get it running as smoothly as IE10 though, and then I will consider switching permanently. Google should take note.

I use IE9 in Win7 and have no reason to use anything else but in Win8 IE10 doesn't use ClearType so my eyes water within a few minutes of using it. ClearType doesn't work well in portrait mode so they decided to just remove it from IE10 even though lots of people are just using regular displays that will never be rotated 90 degrees and would greatly benefit from the option to turn it back on.
If I bother to install Win8 on my desktop again I will definitely be trying out Firefox because it probably will still use Cleartype and make my eyes feel much better.

If I get a Win8 tablet with a very high PPI screen I can see that ClearType wouldn't be needed anymore and IE10 will be fine but until then I guess I would have to say that Firefox would be my choice (and I haven't used Firefox in many years).

I have preferred Chrome for a long time while using windows 7 and with the switch to windows 8, I have been using Chrome and IE on and off. Firefox does provide a great alternative to the users and with more to come, I am sure there will a lot of happy customers.
As far as Firefox is concerned, I have been a fan since I started developing FireFox Add-ons with the Add-on Builder and SDK and the whole process of developer resources has fallen into place. Good going, Firefox!